British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's report said: "Our probe found that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's father held a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
